Hitchhiking With Vanessa

"A small crowd gathered around the dumpster in the rain. Word filtered back that the girl was a teenage hitchhiker. I remember thinking that it could be me, because I was also a teenage hitchhiker."

That's Vanessa Veselka, up-and-coming novelist and Litkicksfavorite, telling a harrowing true story about a past run-in with a serial killer in the pages of the latest (November 2012) GQ magazine. GQ doesn't seem to have the story online (have they heard that Newsweek is going all-digital? GQ may want to update its content strategy) but it's worth seeking out. We're glad Vanessa Veselka is being more careful (we think) about her personal safety today.

Well I've spent all day (so far) on your site after running across it because at some other point I had bookmarked it earlier. Now, a few hours later, I am hoping to forget the fascination - f'rinstance, reading about the origins of how it came to be which I was NOT going to read because <#snore> (I thought) turned out to be "veeellly intellesting."
If only I as a writer can live up to the juiciness of it all. I earlier read your review of 'Zazen' and will obtain it in some way. (Library I hope: I have attempted to cull my own library many times and cannot as I need the books I have, and can't imagine not needing them (mostly poetry and history, art & Western magical traditions, books on physics, dictionaries of rhyme and word roots, these necessary things don't come with their own shelf space!). Anyway thanks! I was afraid your site was defunct when I looked at some of the dates: hooray for us. Got stuck on some Beats as my teacher is one. I digress. Thanks again. I am a fan of the printed page without being e-averse. I have a Frank Zappa outlook towards posterity: asked how he would like to be remembered, he said it wasn't important.

All the Beat writers inspired themselves with doppelgängers, authentic hipsters who embodied their ideals with great authenticity. Jack Kerouac had Neal Cassady, William S. Burroughs had Herbert Huncke ... and Allen Ginsberg had Carl Solomon.

Let’s fast-forward a little to when 'Armed Love' was reviewed in The New York Times Book Review. I remember sitting at my table and reading the review, which said, in part, that if books of poetry were given ratings, "Ms. Lerman’s book would deserve a double X." I think what riled the reviewer was that ...

I learned about drinking whiskey, specifically bourbon whiskey, from Raymond Chandler. Actually, I recently read in his letters that Chandler was more of a gin man. So I really learned about drinking whiskey from Chandler’s alter ego, Philip Marlowe.

It's fitting that the guy who singlehandedly invented rock and roll when he recorded a song called "Mabellene" at Chess studios in Chicago on May 21, 1955 would later become an early innovator in the rock memoir field.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about drunks. Specifically, I've been thinking about literature written by drunks and/or about drinking. Two recent biographies have helped catalyze my thinking on this ...

"Harriet Beecher Stowe was the daughter, sister and wife of clergymen. She had grown up with Scripture. She quoted passages from the Bible all the time in her letters and conversation; it was a living presence for her. She felt it as a great power in the world, which was a large part of what gave her the courage to confront the entire nation, the economy, the philosophy, the political world ..."